GPS monitoring of protection-order respondents

FYI, our letter to Hon Anne Tolley regarding her Radio NZ interview on 16 May 2013, that can be heard here.

It’s incredible how complacent kiwis are about government removal of civil rights and fair treatment. We believe western governments including New Zealand are preparing for major repression of their populations and are awarding themselves more and more powers and laws for this purpose. Regardless, Tolley’s proposal will impact almost exclusively on men and we need to pay attention to this development.

MMA
MINISTRY OF MEN’S AFFAIRS
MINITATANGA MO NGA TANE
A Community Group because successive governments have failed to respect the voice and welfare of New Zealand men

Re: Interview on Radio NZ’s ‘Nine to Noon’ programme on 16 May 2013 concerning GPS tracking of Protection Order respondents.

On the basis of your interview we are concerned about your true motives and intentions. At the end of this letter outlining our concerns we put a number of questions to you that we would like answers to.

We have serious concerns about a number of statements you made in this interview:

Ms Tolley: “…I’ve had a couple of really tragic cases in Gisborne where people, the the the women concerned have done everything that they possibly could to stay away from these, these animals and um they’re still hunted down and, you know, anything that we can do in a very complex situation we, you know we should be taking every effort.”

We were very concerned that you referred to male human beings as “animals”. Staff in Corrections are required to treat the offenders they are responsible for with respect and dignity, yet you as the head of Corrections model to your department this dehumanizing language and attitude towards offenders. In your position of power such language amounts to hate speech likely to encourage your staff to view and treat offenders in dehumanizing ways. You further suggest that “anything we can do” would be justified and this may encourage certain Corrections staff to breach ethical boundaries in their treatment of offenders. Your language and attitude here breached ethical boundaries already.

Interviewer: “If it’s already in place for serious offenders, I think you announced this about a year ago, why is it not applied to domestic violence offenders?”

Ms Tolley: “Oh, well, I mean it’s an evolving process. So, we’ve got 40 offenders currently in the community and that’s just within about 6 or 7 months so, you know this is very new for us ah and …we started with ah sex offenders, we’ve now included ah violent offenders and I, I’ve asked Corrections now to investigate um whether we can include some of these um repetitive violent um people who are who are breaching those protection orders.”

Our first concern was that you acknowledged GPS monitoring can already be applied to violent offenders, therefore it can already be applied to people who breach protection orders by violently offending. There is then no need to seek to extend GPS monitoring for this purpose, so is your true intention to use GPS monitoring for those respondents who breach protection orders in non-violent ways? Or is your true intention to use protection orders and the low standard of justice they entail as way of controlling people who someone claims or predicts might offend violently in the future? Such draconian removal of freedoms amounts to punishment for offending that has not occured and may never occur, and we are concerned this injustice is becoming a norm designed to target men primarily.

You will be aware Ms Tolley that NZ protection orders are already a travesty of justice. Case law is gradually recognizing this in piecemeal fashion. That nobody to date has mounted a challenge under international conventions to this travesty is surprising, but your proposal to extend such injustice further is concerning.
(i) Protection orders punish people by removal of some of their fundamental rights, through a Family Court process that lacks most long-established protections against false conviction and other injustice.
(ii) There is no limitation on the evidence that a Family Court can include, there is no need to prove any any prima facie case beyond making an allegation, and there is no requirement at any point to prove allegations beyond reasonable doubt.
(iii) The ‘balance of probabilities’ level of proof is inadequate for such serious removal of respondents’ rights, and in practice amounts simply to ‘whatever a Family Court judge chooses to believe at his/her total discretion’.
(iv) Most protection orders are made on the basis of no evidence beyond an applicant’s uncorroborated allegations.
(v) Punishment through protection orders can be imposed and is often imposed in the absence of any wrongdoing by the applicant, based entirely on an applicant’s subjective beliefs or feelings about a respondent’s behaviour that may otherwise be entirely legal and reasonable (See the Domestic Violence Act 1995 s13 (1) and (2), s14 (3), (4) and (5)).
(vi) The range of behaviours leading to punishment via protection order is extensive, far beyond what is illegal according to the Crimes Act, and in addition those behaviours are vaguely defined so as to allow almost any behaviour to be labelled as ‘domestic violence’.
(vii) Protection orders can be made and often are made without notice, i.e. the respondent is punished without any right to a legal process at all, without any right even to answer allegations made against him. This punishment routinely lasts for several months before the respondent gets any chance to answer and will become permanent if for any reason the respondent does not initiate legal proceedings against that order.
(viii) Those punished via protection orders are almost all men. Applications made by men for protection orders are refused much more often than those made by women, and protection orders made against women are discharged much more frequently and much earlier than those against men, showing strong gender bias in practice.

The Ministry of Men’s Affairs is concerned that you are seeking to allow this appallingly inadequate level of justice to creep further into New Zealand law, now through its Corrections system and Parole Boards that, like the Family Court, are not required to observe most of the long-established protections against injustice that District and High Courts are required to observe.

You will also be aware that most breaches of protection orders involve nothing that could reasonably be seen as violent. Breaches are often for sending a birthday present to one’s child, waving at one’s children when they happen to pass by in a car or attempting to communicate with ‘the protected person’ in non-violent ways. Breaches are often prosecuted at the whim of ‘the protected person’ who is allowed to invite the respondent to have contact but then to complain of a breach if (s)he becomes displeased with the respondent for any reason at all. Men are mainly the victims of such unfairness and The Ministry of Men’s Affairs is concerned that you intend to compound this through GPS monitoring. Again, any violent breach can already be dealt with by GPS monitoring, so the extension of such monitoring that you are seeking can only be intended for those who breach non-violently or those who have not yet breached at all.

Interviewer: “How does it work? Presumably the offenders have ankle bracelets attached, so how, how does it work, what would trigger a response?”

Ms Tolley: “So each individual offender is set up with um some exclusion areas so on a protection, if someone’s um got a protection order out against them then then you…would look at where the partner lived, um if there’s children then maybe their local school and their local park, and they would be designated as exclusion areas, ah and then if the offender went anywhere near, cause they’re monitored 24 hours a day so if they went anywhere near those exclusion areas the alarm would sound and some action would be taken both by the by the um oversight from Corrections and then if they continue to ah go in to the exclusion area perhaps by the police. So you you it gives you the opportunity to actually intervene early before anything happens so we’re not having the police turn up and pick up the pieces.”

The Ministry of Men’s Affairs is concerned that you refer to protection-order respondents as ‘offenders’. This is common but a dangerous misrepresentation of protection orders. The legal process for imposing a protection order in no way establishes guilt of criminal offending, and to label protection order respondents as ‘offenders’ is irresponsible.

Good scientific research (as opposed to feminist advocacy research) has clearly established that most domestic violence arises in the context of relationship conflict in which both parties behave violently towards each other in various ways. Domestic Violence Act proceedings arbitrarily label one party ‘the violent party’ and the other party ‘the victim’ but this is rarely a valid or reasonable way of viewing the situation. Who is labelled ‘the violent party’ depends mostly on who is the first party to initiate an application, and cross-applications are not allowed. Your labelling of respondents as ‘offenders’ further extends the falsehood inherent in the Domestic Violence Act’s categorizing process. The convention of referring to a respondent as ‘the violent person’ is equally irresponsible given that orders can be made and many are made on the basis of an applicant’s subjective beliefs or feelings about a respondent’s behaviour that may in no way be violent.

The Ministry of Men’s Affairs is also concerned that here you have said you want to use GPS monitoring to “intervene early before anything happens”. The loss of privacy and degree of restriction on free movement through GPS monitoring are very serious impositions on individuals’ rights, can only be seen as punishments, and should not be done on the basis of some possibility of offending that has not yet occurred.

Ms Tolley: “…I think this is this is something we can do to try and get some prevention into the system.”

If you are prepared to use draconian restrictions on people’s freedom to prevent them from possible future offending, then that’s really no different ethically from simply locking in prison anyone you or someone else claims might offend at some time in the future. And that future will often be a lifetime because protection orders are permanent unless a Family Court judge sees fit to discharge it and that is completely at a judge’s discretion.

Interviewer: “So there there there could be bans put on going to a certain city or a certain town?

Ms Tolley: “Yeah, around where where the victims are and it’s it’s how that, ah you know I haven’t seen the detail of that but but that that’s also a possibility…”

We are concerned that you are proposing to stop protection order respondents from being in towns, cities or large areas of the country on the basis of possible offending that they have not committed. That is ethically little different from restricting people’s movement to various areas on the basis of their race, group membership or political allegiance.

Interviewer: “When it comes to domestic ah violence, what would lead to it being imposed on an offender?

Ms Tolley: “The GPS you mean?”

Interviewer: “Yes…”

Ms Tolley: “Oh, yeah we would we would have to so so currently we have to put a case to the Parole Board or to the Court um to show that you know this person is high risk um and that they need this this extreme ah type of management system, and and you know the Parole Board has been pretty good so far.”

We were concerned that you failed to clarify what type of domestic violence you want to lead to GPS monitoring. You may well convince the Parole Board that a protection order respondent is at high risk of breaching the protection order, but that may not involve ‘violence’ at all by any reasonable definition. Also, the Parole Board is not a Court and is not required to follow the proceedings, rules of evidence or standards of proof designed to protect defendants against injustice in Courts.

Ms Tolley: “…Yes, they’re managed and they have to report in and you know they have have random visits but that’s not stopping these guys stalking and and killing ah their their ex partners or their their current partners.”

We were concerned that you use the term “these guys” suggesting that only men stalk or kill current or separated partners. This is not correct; a smaller but not insignificant number of partners and separated partners are killed by women too, including both female and male victims. We were concerned that you would mislead the public by implying that only men commit such violence. Your comment is discriminatory against men.

The questions we would like straight answers to are as follows:

1. What specific behaviours do you want to lead to protection-order respondents being subjected to GPS monitoring?

2. Are you seeking or willing to allow repeated, non-violent breaches of protection orders to lead to GPS monitoring?

3. Do you want decisions to impose GPS monitoring to be made by a District or High Courts on the basis of proof beyond reasonable doubt, or instead do you believe those decisions could be made by the Family Court, Parole Board or other institutions that apply much inferior standards of evidence, proof and justice?

4. Why do you see it as necessary or desirable to extend GPS monitoring when it can already be used for violent offenders?

5. What specific types of evidence do you envisage will allow a body to act on predictions of future violence that has not already been demonstrated? Would sufficient evidence arise from allegations or opinions offered by protection order applicants, or from risk assessments made by psychologists, or from predictions made by psychics? What types of evidence would you see as not sufficient to allow a body to act on such predictions?

6. Do you envisage that GPS monitoring will continue for the duration of the protection order, i.e. throughout the lifetime of any protection-order respondents?

7. Is your true intention to use less robust laws and processes to impose state controls on certain people in ways that would not be acceptable within a robust justice process?

8. What specifically have you requested the Corrections Department or other advisors to report to you on in relation to extending GPS monitoring to protection order respondents, and what background information have you provided them or directed them to consider?

23 Responses to “GPS monitoring of protection-order respondents”

The complications of this will clog thecourts for years. The applicant moves, a whole new bunch of restrictions become imposed. Employment changes (Gotta keep up the child support) make for alterations to permitted areas.

Excellent article. Unfortunately too few people will understand the significance of what you have written about. They will not understand the concept of being excluded from the social contract and subject to it.

I’m astonished that a Cabinet Minister would feel free to publicly promote hatred against men in this way; imagine if her target were Maori, or homosexuals, or Jews. The sad thing is that there will probably be little comment by the mainstream media, and she will almost certainly get away with it.

I suspect a GPS bracelet will do little to deter someone who is really determined to kill or seriously harm an ex-partner; they are likely to be psychotic, under the influence of drugs, or willing to die themselves, perhaps in a “suicide by police” scenario. Just as a protection order is in reality ‘just a piece of paper’, so a GPS bracelet is just a plastic band.

The idea that the police have the resources to swoop out of the sky in time to intervene when an offender crosses an invisible line is just not credible.

I think this policy is more about pandering to the ignorant, middle-class lawnorder brigade than protecting women.

Extremely dangerous men do exist, and the only way of protecting future victims is to get better at identifying them (and previous behaviour is the only reliable way as far as I know), then keeping the securely locked up.

Hans, you are presenting questions to Hon Ann Tolley which demand that she deals with facts. This is extremely unfair of you because we all know that this issue is all about emotion and facts just get in the way of good people like Ms Tolley doing a wonderful job. Also, if some men are dealt with unjustifiably then why should we a a society really care?

Men are more than capable of coping with the pain, if in fact men have any feelings at all (excluding Gay men). The trouble with people like you Hans, is that you are incapable of keeping up with political fashion and understanding that it is real cool to put men down. The great thing about female MPs is their ability to ignore facts and build policy based on their feelings.

Many of our female MP’s have had the same ‘DREAM’ where one day men will no longer exist as equals in society but will be discriminated against openly and with prejudice. Where it will be a shameful thing to be a man unless he conforms to all feminine traits. That dream will become a reality in less than 50 years as well!

On behalf of Hans we thank you Alastair, Downunder, John and others for the supportive acknowledgement. We are used to having our valid, ethical and rational challenges ignored or patronized, but we shall continue to issue them in the hope of improving society for all.

triassic (#8). Yes you’re right. We have seen the light and we will desist from impeding the good work of those seeking to rid the world of evil maleness. From now on we will accept all the punishment and repression we deserve because we are men, and we will refrain from asking any unfairly inconvenient questions. At least until this afternoon.

If the applicant and respondent for the Protection Order were both fitted with GPS trackers, then maybe the incentives and disincentives would be more evenly balanced? I know of several fathers who would have benefited greatly had this applied when they were mangled through the system. The GPS would have shown precisely that the respondent had acted to reduce the distance between them and therefore had committed the breach of the Domestic Violence Act.

Of course this information was already available to the police, but they ignored it and jut threw the book at the man anyway.

The GPS system would package this information and make it economically available to both parties (and they would actually receive the information under Discovery, before the hearing STARTS, in accordance with the law). This would reduce the incentive to the police to prosecute such cases maliciously and justice would benefit greatly. The Government would save the costs of paying lawyers and judges for worthless hearings.

The presence of the visible GPS bracelet would be a public indication of some criminal involvement.

I know it sounds like a shit idea, but surely it is a much less shit idea than what is presently going on?
Isn’t this a pragmatic approach to some of the Domestic Violence Act problems?

#13 Murray. The applicant is under no obligation to stay away from the named person. Paul Catton’s experience will tell you that. In more enlightened Law writing countries, both parties have an obligation to stay away from each other.

Good point Golfa (#14). In my opinion, any applicant for a police safety order or a protection order should be the one to move out of his/her home, to get away from the person (s)he wants to avoid, whom the orders should then merely disallow from following the applicant or attempting to make contact. Also, all such orders should be in force for strictly limited periods of time, any renewal thereof having to be justified by the applicant according to the current circumstances on each occasion. Such orders should not be pretending to establish fault or violent offending, but could simply be a civil mechanism that anyone can use to avoid contact from someone else for a time.

Ann Tolley -having GPS monitoring of the person whom a protection order is held against is a step in the right direction. From personal experience – 111 as an emergency srv is Totally useless & fails the victim on so many levels. GPS monitoring WD assist gr8tly in providing conclusive proof that stalking of victims led, not withstanding it may provide a life saving alert to authorities a breach of an order is possible as an offender is lurking within known daily route of victim. I know in my case I have learned not only from my own personal experience having held a said FULL LIFETIME PROTECTION ORDER – the reality is it is little more than a few pieces of paper with some worthless black type signed by someone known as a judge &sta
mped by someone in a place known as a court house. Meaningless to police, to the victim & obviously to the purpitrator

alex (#18): I might agree with you if protection orders were based on a fair trial with evidence beyond reasonable doubt that violence has occurred that might justify a protection order. But not under the current kangaroo court system that hands out protection orders on anyone’s hollow allegations.

#18 – Ann Tolley -having GPS monitoring of the person whom a protection order is held against is a step in the right direction.

#BovineExcrement

I would have been forced to wear one of Heir Tolley’s Badges of Shame for ten years before I was able to have her Power & Control Order discharged despite:
* the Family Court being provided with irrefutable evidence that the applicant of the Power & Control Order was either lying or deluded or both.
* the Family Court Judge ordering the applicant to complete an Anger Management Course, Drug & Alcohol counseling and Psychiatric evaluation and therapy that were never completed.
* the Court appointed Expert alluding to the applicant being delusional.
* CYF, Counsel for Child and the Family Court Judge all agreeing that I should have full custody of my children.
* CYF intervening in the visitations between my children and their mother so that visits were stringently supervised for only one hour per month for more than one year.
* the applicant making regular complaints to the Police over the entire ten years that accused me of being the root cause of every trivial problem that she encountered, or imagined.
* me moving 100 miles away to another town to minimise the risk of being taken in to custody by a misguided, misandric or stupid Police Officer intent on placating the applicant.
* a more enlightened Family Court Judge finally discharging that Power & Control Order ten years after the initial Order was made.

… Meaningless to police, to the victim & obviously to the purpitrator

… Protection Orders are meaningless to the [alleged] perpetrator??
… I have some very strong words to answer that question but they’re best not posted here.

We might as well have all men accused of rape wear a Badge Of Shame before they get to Court … you know, just in case. We could even have the potential rapist’s Badge Of Shame made in a particular colour to ensure he is easily noticed and avoided … you know, just in case.

Are the ministry of false allegations following the doctrines of the Nazis of the 1930s where propaganda was feed to the people through the media of the time,targeting Jews,ethnic minorities,homosexuals,those born with defects,mental illnesses ,;tagging them ,controlling where they went,who they assocated with and eventually destroying generations of lives even though these people committed no crimes against humanity.!

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